The seeds of divergence: the economy of French North America, 1688 to 1760

Generally, Canada has been ignored in the literature on the colonial origins of divergence with most of the attention going to the United States. Late nineteenth century estimates of income per capita show that Canada was relatively poorer than the United States and that within Canada, the French and Catholic population of Quebec was considerably poorer. Was this gap long standing? Some evidence has been advanced for earlier periods, but it is quite limited and not well-suited for comparison with other societies. This thesis aims to contribute both to Canadian economic history and to comparative work on inequality across nations during the early modern period. With the use of novel prices and wages from Quebec—which was then the largest settlement in Canada and under French rule—a price index, a series of real wages and a measurement of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are constructed. They are used to shed light both on the course of economic development until the French were defeated by the British in 1760 and on standards of living in that colony relative to the mother country, France, as well as the American colonies. The work is divided into three components. The first component relates to the construction of a price index. The absence of such an index has been a thorn in the side of Canadian historians as it has limited the ability of historians to obtain real values of wages, output and living standards. This index shows that prices did not follow any trend and remained at a stable level. However, there were episodes of wide swings—mostly due to wars and the monetary experiment of playing card money. The creation of this index lays the foundation of the next component. The second component constructs a standardized real wage series in the form of welfare ratios (a consumption basket divided by nominal wage rate multiplied by length of work year) to compare Canada with France, England and Colonial America. Two measures are derived. The first relies on a “bare bones” definition of consumption with a large share of land-intensive goods. This measure indicates that Canada was poorer than England and Colonial America and not appreciably richer than France. However, this measure overestimates the relative position of Canada to the Old World because of the strong presence of land-intensive goods. A second measure is created using a “respectable” definition of consumption in which the basket includes a larger share of manufactured goods and capital-intensive goods. This second basket better reflects differences in living standards since the abundance of land in Canada (and Colonial America) made it easy to achieve bare subsistence, but the scarcity of capital and skilled labor made the consumption of luxuries and manufactured goods (clothing, lighting, imported goods) highly expensive. With this measure, the advantage of New France over France evaporates and turns slightly negative. In comparison with Britain and Colonial America, the gap widens appreciably. This element is the most important for future research. By showing a reversal because of a shift to a different type of basket, it shows that Old World and New World comparisons are very sensitive to how we measure the cost of living. Furthermore, there are no sustained improvements in living standards over the period regardless of the measure used. Gaps in living standards observed later in the nineteenth century existed as far back as the seventeenth century. In a wider American perspective that includes the Spanish colonies, Canada fares better. The third component computes a new series for Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is to avoid problems associated with using real wages in the form of welfare ratios which assume a constant labor supply. This assumption is hard to defend in the case of Colonial Canada as there were many signs of increasing industriousness during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The GDP series suggest no long-run trend in living standards (from 1688 to circa 1765). The long peace era of 1713 to 1740 was marked by modest economic growth which offset a steady decline that had started in 1688, but by 1760 (as a result of constant warfare) living standards had sunk below their 1688 levels. These developments are accompanied by observations that suggest that other indicators of living standard declined. The flat-lining of incomes is accompanied by substantial increases in the amount of time worked, rising mortality and rising infant mortality. In addition, comparisons of incomes with the American colonies confirm the results obtained with wages— Canada was considerably poorer. At the end, a long conclusion is provides an exploratory discussion of why Canada would have diverged early on. In structural terms, it is argued that the French colony was plagued by the problem of a small population which prohibited the existence of scale effects. In combination with the fact that it was dispersed throughout the territory, the small population of New France limited the scope for specialization and economies of scale. However, this problem was in part created, and in part aggravated, by institutional factors like seigneurial tenure. The colonial origins of French America’s divergence from the rest of North America are thus partly institutional

Bruno Hongre et Paul Lidsky, L’Univers poétique de Jacques Brel

C’est d’un ton élogieux que Bruno Hongre et Paul Lidsky évoquent l’homme aux multiples facettes que fut Brel à l’occasion du vingtième anniversaire de sa mort (ce que ne manque pas de signaler le bandeau). Ils choisissent cependant de privilégier celle du poète. Leur entreprise s’apparente donc à celle de Jean Clouzet en 1964, qui a depuis fait l’objet de plusieurs rééditions (Jacques Brel. Éd. augmentée, introduction de Chantal Derycke. Paris, Seghers, 1984, 201 p.). Ce dernier ouvrage est d..

Bruno Hongre et Paul Lidsky, L’Univers poétique de Jacques Brel

C’est d’un ton élogieux que Bruno Hongre et Paul Lidsky évoquent l’homme aux multiples facettes que fut Brel à l’occasion du vingtième anniversaire de sa mort (ce que ne manque pas de signaler le bandeau). Ils choisissent cependant de privilégier celle du poète. Leur entreprise s’apparente donc à celle de Jean Clouzet en 1964, qui a depuis fait l’objet de plusieurs rééditions (Jacques Brel. Éd. augmentée, introduction de Chantal Derycke. Paris, Seghers, 1984, 201 p.). Ce dernier ouvrage est d..

Molecular signaling within growth plates of the radius and tibia after periosteal stripping: an experimental study in lambs

Periosteal transection and elevation is a standard treatment for angular limb deformities in foals. It is used to correct axis deviations in the limbs at an early age to assure that the foals grow up with straight limbs to improve their chances to reach their full potential as future athletes. Although clinically proven, its mechanisms of action were never elucidated on a more basic scientific level. In this experimental study the molecular response to periosteal stripping was investigated within the growth plate and adjacent perichondrium. The study was based on the hypothesis that a growth restraining feedback loop related to Indian hedgehog (Ihh), parathyroid hormone related protein (PTHrP) and parathyroid hormone receptors (PTHR) was responsible for the corrective effect of periosteal stripping. Twelve 3 months old lambs underwent periosteal stripping of the distal lateral radius and tibia on one side. The contralateral side served as non-operated controls. Two animals each group were sacrificed at 2, 6, 10, 14, 18 and 21 days after surgery and the growth plates with minimal adjacent bone tissue were harvested for histological investigations. After decalcification, paraffin-embedded sections with routine hematoxylin-eosin stains were prepared to assess morphology and length of growth plates, whereas immunohistochemistry of Ihh, PTHrP, PTHR and the two cytokines fibroblast- (FGF) and transforming growth factor (TGF) was performed to study different protein expression between operated limbs and controls. The results indicate that periosteal stripping caused an up-regulation of Ihh in the early pre- and hypertrophic zone of the growth plate, followed by an increase of PTHrP mainly in the perichondrium, while an increase of PTHR was noticed in all zones, although highest in the perichondrium and hypertrophic zones. The growth factors FGF and TGF were upregulated in all zones, but FGF in response to periosteal stripping was more intensely expressed in the proliferative zone and the highest peak of TGF was found in the perichondrium. Length measurements of the various growth zones revealed significant negative correlations between the proliferative and pre-and hypertrophic zones, indicating that indeed a negative feed back loop after periosteal stripping exists coupled by the Ihh/PTHrP/PTHR cascade.The hypothesis that periosteal stripping had an effect on the Ihh/PTHrP/PTHR related feedback loop in epiphyseal growth was confirmed in this experimental study in lambs. Since these mechanisms are very basic and similar in most species, it can be safely assumed that the effects in foals are similar. In fact, the asymmetric mechanical load in animals suffering from axis deviation may even increase the enhancing effect of length correction

FROGS : Find Rapidly OTU with Galaxy Solution

http://frogs.toulouse.inra.fr/il s'agit d'un type de produit dont les métadonnées ne correspondent pas aux métadonnées attendues dans les autres types de produit : SOFTWAREFROGS : Find Rapidly OTU with Galaxy Solutio

FROGS : Find Rapidly OTU with Galaxy Solution

http://frogs.toulouse.inra.fr/il s'agit d'un type de produit dont les métadonnées ne correspondent pas aux métadonnées attendues dans les autres types de produit : SOFTWAREFROGS : Find Rapidly OTU with Galaxy Solutio

FROGS: Find, Rapidly, OTUs with Galaxy Solution

International audienceMotivation: Metagenomics leads to major advances in microbial ecology and biologists need user friendly tools to analyze their data on their own. Results: This Galaxy-supported pipeline, called FROGS, is designed to analyze large sets of amplicon sequences and produce abundance tables of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) and their taxonomic affiliation. The clustering uses Swarm. The chimera removal uses VSEARCH, combined with original cross-sample validation. The taxonomic affiliation returns an innovative multi-affiliation output to highlight databases conflicts and uncertainties. Statistical results and numerous graphical illustrations are produced along the way to monitor the pipeline. FROGS was tested for the detection and quantification of OTUs on real and in silico datasets and proved to be rapid, robust and highly sensitive. It compares favorably with the widespread mothur, UPARSE and QIIME.Avec le séquençage haut-débit (454, MiSeq), les pipelines de traitements de séquençage d'ARNr 16S actuels produisent de gros jeu de données. Le calcul des tables d'abondances d'OTU et leur affiliation taxonomique peinent à s'exécuter et les solutions les plus efficaces sont souvent dédiées aux spécialistes. Dans ce contexte, nous avons développé le pipeline "FROGS" : « Find Rapidly OTU with Galaxy Solution ». Développé sous environnement Galaxy, "FROGS" intègre un outil de prétraitement des données permettant le contigage de séquences, le nettoyage des données et la suppression des chimères. La déréplication des séquences se fait par un script python. L'étape de clusterisation s'effectue avec le logiciel SWARM. Un outil d'assignation retourne l’affiliation taxonomique de chaque OTU en utilisant à la fois l'algorithme RDPClassifier et NCBI blast+ sur la banque de données Silva SSU 119. Enfin, un outil de post-traitement permet aux utilisateurs de traiter la table d'abondance obtenue avec les filtres habituels, fournit des résultats statistiques et des illustrations graphiques. FROGS a été développé pour traiter de grandes quantités de données par l'utilisation d’outils innovants et une conception optimisée. De plus, il est portable sur toutes les plateformes Galaxy avec le minimum de dépendances informatiques et architecturales. FROGS a été testé sur plusieurs jeux de données simulées. L'outil se montre extrêmement rapide, robuste et hautement sensible pour la détection des OTU avec très peu de faux-positifs comparé aux autres pipelines largement utilisés par la communauté

Enhanced Carbon Sequestration in Marginal Land Upon Shift towards Perennial C₄<i>Miscanthus × giganteus</i>: A Case Study in North-Western Czechia

Bioenergy crops such as Miscanthus × giganteus are foreseeable as an alternative source to replace fossil fuel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They are also assessed as an environment-friendly solution for polluted, marginal and low-quality agricultural soils. Several studies had been launched on soil organic carbon sequestration potentials of miscanthus culture along with its impacts on restoring soil functionality, most of which focus on the long-term basis of the plant’s cultivation. Nevertheless, information concerning the short term impacts as well as the situation in Czechia is still scarce. In this context, a field experiment was launched in 2017 in a poor-quality agricultural land in the city of Chomutov (North-Western Czechia) to compare the impacts of the perennial C4 miscanthus with an annual C3 forage crop (wheat) on the soil carbon stocks as well as enhancing its functionality. Results through the 0–30 cm soil profile examination showed that miscanthus plants played a role in improving the studied soil physico-chemical (bulk density and soil organic carbon concentrations) and biological (Phospholipid fatty acids stress indicator, basal respiration and fluorescein diacetate hydrolytic activity) parameters. The naturally occurring δ13C concentrations were used to evaluate the direct plant contribution to the total soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and revealed considerable miscanthus contribution all over the detected soil layers (1.98 ± 0.21 Mg C. ha−1 yr−1) after only 3 growing seasons. It is thus suggested that the C4 perennial miscanthus possess remarkable prospects for SOC sequestration and restoring degraded lands